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Hallow writes "While terms of the agreement remain confidential, according to a C:Net story, Caldera and Microsoft have settled out of court with Microsoft making a one-time only payment of about $150 million USD. This is much lower than the 1.6 billion in damages Caldera was seeking." Well, yes. Personally, I don't think Microsoft likes their chances in court these days.

The PR people at Caldera Systems e-mailed me with the news that they've gotten some major outside investment. The press has got more news, but the company's getting $30 million dollars from SCO, Sun, Citrix, Novell, Egan-Managed Capital and Chicago Venture Partners. In other news, their case against Microsoft continues to progress.It should be noted that while they have similar names, and are owned by the same man, Caldera (lawsuit company) and Caldera Systems are separate companies - thanks to all those who pointed out my mistake.

The PR people at Caldera Systems e-mailed me with the news that they've gotten some major outside investment. The press has got more news, but the company's getting $30 million dollars from SCO, Sun, Citrix, Novell, Egan-Managed Capital and Chicago Venture Partners. In other news, their case against Microsoft continues to progress.It should be noted that while they have similar names, and are owned by the same man, Caldera (lawsuit company) and Caldera Systems are separate companies - thanks to all those who pointed out my mistake.

jdaily writes "IBM's server group head said in an interview that IBM will Linux-enable all of its server hardware, from PCs to mainframes. " This is a pretty major endorsement... but I still want a Thinkpad running Linux with every component (including the freakin' modem!) working. You listening IBM?

Carnage4Life writes "The FCC is beginning to get impatient with the cable TV industry and television manufacturers for not getting digital TV out to consumers more quickly. In an interesting speech delivered at the CES on Friday the FCC chairman explains that the FCC is reluctant to dictate standards to the industry but will do so if no consensus on standards is reached by April."

MatriXOracle writes "AMD seems to be on fire lately. According to this C|Net article, HP will be including K6-2's in new portable models, and is considering the Athlon for desktop use. Meanwhile, Gateway is blaming its disappointing earnings on supply (or lack thereof) of Intel chips, and will start selling systems with AMD chips very soon. Finally, an 800MHz Athlon is being released today. "

sudama writes "This report claims that OS X will be completely open source, 'like the popular Linux operating system.' " This is pretty fresh from someone hearing Job's keynote at Macworld, so don't plan your life around this or anything. They've been planning on releasing the core for some time now. The question is how much of the OS will be released. under an open source license.A lot of people have been writing with the word that Steve Jobs, surprise, surprise, has dropped interim from his title. Yes, Dict-er-CEO-for-Life Jobs is back.

The service won't actually be available until April, and even then only in places where local telcos have DSL capability, but according to this C|Net story, Broadband Digital Group is supposed to be taking advance registrations for free DSL service as of today. But there are catches to this service. Big ones. (Click below for more.)

The first catch - and one that I read with horror - is that in order to get a free DSL modem (they aren't cheap) a subscriber must refer at least 10 other subscribers to Broadband Digital Group. Sure, they're going to come up with some sort of sanctimonious anti-spam policy, but I will bet this policy causes as much spam as a horror called AllAdvantage.com, which claims to have a strong anti-spam policy, but at the same time offers big incentives to members who refer "friends" to its service. (The hypocrisy behind these "wink,wink, we're not spamming, just asking people to tell friends about us" policies is truly vomit-inducing, but it is illegal to do what I'd like to do to the people who came up with this horror, so they're safe from me. For the moment.)

I'm tired of all the All-Advantage "friends" I suddenly have who I've never met before. I get spam from them every day. Now I'm sure I - along with many others - will suddenly have many Broadband Digital Group "friends" trying to rope us into this new scheme. I spotted nothing on the company's Web site about simply buying a DSL modem. I'm sure this is an oversight that will be rectified shortly. It would be horrible to think that this company would only open its service to spammers, no matter what kind of market-speak they use to cover up the fact that their referral program is nothing but an inducement to spam.

But even if Broadband Digital Group can figure out a way to justify its spam-creating marketing plan or drops it in favor of something nicer, you will still be forced to use software from Broadband Digital Group's business partner Winfire to access the service. This software requires "Windows 95, 98 (or higher), or Windows NT." No Mac, no Linux, no *nix. Without this software you won't see the ads, and Broadband Digital Group won't be able to gather info on what sites you visit, so you must have their chosen software to connect to their service.

You can see the company's point; their service is ad-supported, so if they can't give all kinds of info about you to advertisers, there's no way they can give you - free - a service that currently retails for $40 - $60 per month in most areas. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The ads pay the freight. If you are going to use the service, you must put up with the ads. And you can't even complain about being forced to use Windows as part of the deal. No one is forcing you to sign up for free broadband Internet service. By definition, wherever you will be able to get this service, you will also be able to sign up for DSL service through other providers that will charge you money - but won't require special software or send you an ad barrage.

Will this work? Is this going to be a viable business? It's going to be interesting to watch. There are obvious flaws in the company's business plan, but there are good things about it, too. Please don't take my word for it either way; I urge you to read the C|Net story and check the company's Web site before coming up with an opinion. If nothing else, assuming Broadband Digital Group can grow as rapidly as its owners and investors hope it can, the availability of "free" broadband service will force other high speed Internet access providers - like cable companies - to provide either more reliable service or lower prices (or both!) than they do now if they want to have any subscribers left in a few years.

The service won't actually be available until April, and even then only in places where local telcos have DSL capability, but according to this C|Net story, Broadband Digital Group is supposed to be taking advance registrations for free DSL service as of today. But there are catches to this service. Big ones. (Click below for more.)

The first catch - and one that I read with horror - is that in order to get a free DSL modem (they aren't cheap) a subscriber must refer at least 10 other subscribers to Broadband Digital Group. Sure, they're going to come up with some sort of sanctimonious anti-spam policy, but I will bet this policy causes as much spam as a horror called AllAdvantage.com, which claims to have a strong anti-spam policy, but at the same time offers big incentives to members who refer "friends" to its service. (The hypocrisy behind these "wink,wink, we're not spamming, just asking people to tell friends about us" policies is truly vomit-inducing, but it is illegal to do what I'd like to do to the people who came up with this horror, so they're safe from me. For the moment.)

I'm tired of all the All-Advantage "friends" I suddenly have who I've never met before. I get spam from them every day. Now I'm sure I - along with many others - will suddenly have many Broadband Digital Group "friends" trying to rope us into this new scheme. I spotted nothing on the company's Web site about simply buying a DSL modem. I'm sure this is an oversight that will be rectified shortly. It would be horrible to think that this company would only open its service to spammers, no matter what kind of market-speak they use to cover up the fact that their referral program is nothing but an inducement to spam.

But even if Broadband Digital Group can figure out a way to justify its spam-creating marketing plan or drops it in favor of something nicer, you will still be forced to use software from Broadband Digital Group's business partner Winfire to access the service. This software requires "Windows 95, 98 (or higher), or Windows NT." No Mac, no Linux, no *nix. Without this software you won't see the ads, and Broadband Digital Group won't be able to gather info on what sites you visit, so you must have their chosen software to connect to their service.

You can see the company's point; their service is ad-supported, so if they can't give all kinds of info about you to advertisers, there's no way they can give you - free - a service that currently retails for $40 - $60 per month in most areas. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The ads pay the freight. If you are going to use the service, you must put up with the ads. And you can't even complain about being forced to use Windows as part of the deal. No one is forcing you to sign up for free broadband Internet service. By definition, wherever you will be able to get this service, you will also be able to sign up for DSL service through other providers that will charge you money - but won't require special software or send you an ad barrage.

Will this work? Is this going to be a viable business? It's going to be interesting to watch. There are obvious flaws in the company's business plan, but there are good things about it, too. Please don't take my word for it either way; I urge you to read the C|Net story and check the company's Web site before coming up with an opinion. If nothing else, assuming Broadband Digital Group can grow as rapidly as its owners and investors hope it can, the availability of "free" broadband service will force other high speed Internet access providers - like cable companies - to provide either more reliable service or lower prices (or both!) than they do now if they want to have any subscribers left in a few years.

Quite a number of people have been writing recently in regards to the recent Hotmail outage. As we reported before, a Linux programmer wanted to get his mail - and paid the $35 fee to renew their domain registration. News.com has picked up the news story, complete with thanks from MSFT to Mr. Michael Chaney.

Ten years ago Jim Willard was a happy, prosperous computer company executive. Then he came up with the idea of making disposable "paper computers" that could be used for census forms, voting ballots, catalog ordering, utility bills and payments, and countless other "disposable" applications. Now Jim's life is in ruins because of his obsession with paper computers, but his idea is starting to get some attention. Will paper computers become the Next Big Thing? Will Jim finally be able to afford new front disk rotors for his rusted Nissan pickup? (Click below for more.)

One of our favorite Great American Myths is that of the lone inventor toiling in his garage or basement to produce a product that will revolutionize society. More often than not, in both the myth and real life, the inventor dies penniless and unrecognized, his invention either cast on the trash heap of history or adopted in a slightly mutated form by a Big Corporation that doesn't pay him a cent for his years of self-financed labor. But a few inventors - just enough to hold out hope for all the rest - strike it big and provide inspiration for all who follow.

Jim Willard hasn't struck it big. He may yet, but there's no telling. His idea was originally an outgrowth of the defense wind-down after the Soviet Union gave up on the Cold War, when defense contractors like the large systems integration company Jim ran during the glory years of DoD spending started looking for ways to make a living in the civilian world. There was no public Internet back then, but there were plenty of computers that required large amounts of remote data input, and this was the market Jim lit upon.

Imagine a census form made up of several glued-together layers of paper with simple keyboard-patterned membrane switches printed in between the layers, and a tiny, triggerable RF transmitter built into it. People would fill out the multiple-choice forms by pressing printed "keys," hit an "enter button" when they were done, and mail the thing to the Census Bureau, where the forms could be automatically read, via the RF interface, without even opening the envelopes. If - and Jim believes this goal is easily achievable - the cost of the "paper computer" forms can be held below $5 or so, the total cost of printing, mailing, and processing them would be much less than it is for traditional, non-electronic census forms.

Jim also found another lucrative-looking market for his product-in-the-making: polling places. He'd already done a study of a voting machine's life. "It sits in a warehouse for two years," he says, "then some grandmother is going to set it up and run it for one day. It's got to be easy for her to use, and its a true mission-critical application. It turned out cheapest to build a stripped-down PC, send it to the polling location, then throw it away after election day and buy a new one the next time around."

And having only one stripped-down PC per polling place, instead of one at each voting station - with paper computers used as the actual ballots - would lower the cost even further.

During the course of his study, Jim found that absentee ballots were even more expensive to process than those cast in person; in 1991 and 1992, he says, Fairfax County, Virginia, spent about $16 per absentee vote cast, and he figured he could easily get it down to the sub-$5 range using his paper computer technology. But no contract was ever signed and no functional test was ever made. Instead, Jim spent his time and personal resources in a years-long search for venture capital that he continues, still fruitlessly, today.

Fairly or unfairly, Jim blames most of his failure to make something big out of the paper computer concept on the flakiness of the venture capital business. "They won't even look at something unless it's presented by friends," he says, "and even then, if it's not something that immediately jazzes them, uh-uh."

Worse, he claims, venture capitalists live and die by industry fads. "One week they're doing nothing but biochem, the next week they're all doing dot coms," he says. "Paper computing is not a 'sexy' project, just a good market, so they're not interested."

The Thinnest Thin Client Ever

Here's the most recent incarnation of Jim's basic concept: a super-cheap piece of multi-layered paper with a flexible light-emitting polymer screen, a low-end dedicated processor, a stripped-down modem, and membrane switches built into it. You could use this technology to make a Web terminal so cheap that you could send it as a direct mail piece. Plug it into a phone line and it would automatically dial the company that sent it out, call up catalog info, and let you place orders. Computer knowledge (and investment) required by the user would be exactly zero. Jim engagingly paints the mental picture of a poster for Victoria's Secret from which you could directly order the products it displayed, literally making the poster into a point of sale terminal that would both make a sales pitch and "close" the sale, all on the spot, for next to nothing in the way of either cash investment or floor space.

Beef up the concept a little, add a decent general-purpose microprocessor and a bit of RAM, and Voila! - an electronic PDA that costs less than one of the binder-enclosed, paper-based "Executive Organizers" you see in office supply stores.

You'd think Oracle, with all of its talk about networked "thin client" computers, or Sun, where the network is (supposed to be) the computer, would be all over Jim. He says this isn't going to happen; that these companies "...have divisions that have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in current technology. I walk in to see the heads of these companies' thin client divisions and tell them they can close the doors, that everything they're doing is obsolete, they're going to laugh. Why would they want to put themselves out of work?"

In this story published on November 11, 1999, CNET News.com reporter Brooke Crothers quoted Jim extensively, but also mentioned research done by IBM that may lead to ultra-thin computing devices similar to his. Does this mean Jim is dead in the water? That he should give up hope the way so many small software developers have given up on projects once they found Microsoft had something similar in the works?

Jim has invested years in a concept that, if handled right, could change the way computing is done and Internet connections are made, and could change the way remote data gathering is done by governments, retailers, and many others. But Jim is running low on stamina - and is out of money. The comment about his old Nissan pickup needing new brake rotors he can't afford isn't a joke; it's a sad fact. This slow descent into poverty, followed by a life of bitterness and regret, is the fate of most independent inventors. Will it be Jim's? Or will he be one of the few who manages to turn a profit (and receive at least a little acclaim) from his work?

Here, for your review, is Jim's Paper Computer Corporation Web site. Take a look at it. Then let Jim know what you think, either by e-mail or, better yet, by posting a comment here on Slashdot. Jim will be reading what you have to say and taking it to heart. If he has time, he may even jump in and respond directly to your comments.

Ten years ago Jim Willard was a happy, prosperous computer company executive. Then he came up with the idea of making disposable "paper computers" that could be used for census forms, voting ballots, catalog ordering, utility bills and payments, and countless other "disposable" applications. Now Jim's life is in ruins because of his obsession with paper computers, but his idea is starting to get some attention. Will paper computers become the Next Big Thing? Will Jim finally be able to afford new front disk rotors for his rusted Nissan pickup? (Click below for more.)

One of our favorite Great American Myths is that of the lone inventor toiling in his garage or basement to produce a product that will revolutionize society. More often than not, in both the myth and real life, the inventor dies penniless and unrecognized, his invention either cast on the trash heap of history or adopted in a slightly mutated form by a Big Corporation that doesn't pay him a cent for his years of self-financed labor. But a few inventors - just enough to hold out hope for all the rest - strike it big and provide inspiration for all who follow.

Jim Willard hasn't struck it big. He may yet, but there's no telling. His idea was originally an outgrowth of the defense wind-down after the Soviet Union gave up on the Cold War, when defense contractors like the large systems integration company Jim ran during the glory years of DoD spending started looking for ways to make a living in the civilian world. There was no public Internet back then, but there were plenty of computers that required large amounts of remote data input, and this was the market Jim lit upon.

Imagine a census form made up of several glued-together layers of paper with simple keyboard-patterned membrane switches printed in between the layers, and a tiny, triggerable RF transmitter built into it. People would fill out the multiple-choice forms by pressing printed "keys," hit an "enter button" when they were done, and mail the thing to the Census Bureau, where the forms could be automatically read, via the RF interface, without even opening the envelopes. If - and Jim believes this goal is easily achievable - the cost of the "paper computer" forms can be held below $5 or so, the total cost of printing, mailing, and processing them would be much less than it is for traditional, non-electronic census forms.

Jim also found another lucrative-looking market for his product-in-the-making: polling places. He'd already done a study of a voting machine's life. "It sits in a warehouse for two years," he says, "then some grandmother is going to set it up and run it for one day. It's got to be easy for her to use, and its a true mission-critical application. It turned out cheapest to build a stripped-down PC, send it to the polling location, then throw it away after election day and buy a new one the next time around."

And having only one stripped-down PC per polling place, instead of one at each voting station - with paper computers used as the actual ballots - would lower the cost even further.

During the course of his study, Jim found that absentee ballots were even more expensive to process than those cast in person; in 1991 and 1992, he says, Fairfax County, Virginia, spent about $16 per absentee vote cast, and he figured he could easily get it down to the sub-$5 range using his paper computer technology. But no contract was ever signed and no functional test was ever made. Instead, Jim spent his time and personal resources in a years-long search for venture capital that he continues, still fruitlessly, today.

Fairly or unfairly, Jim blames most of his failure to make something big out of the paper computer concept on the flakiness of the venture capital business. "They won't even look at something unless it's presented by friends," he says, "and even then, if it's not something that immediately jazzes them, uh-uh."

Worse, he claims, venture capitalists live and die by industry fads. "One week they're doing nothing but biochem, the next week they're all doing dot coms," he says. "Paper computing is not a 'sexy' project, just a good market, so they're not interested."

The Thinnest Thin Client Ever

Here's the most recent incarnation of Jim's basic concept: a super-cheap piece of multi-layered paper with a flexible light-emitting polymer screen, a low-end dedicated processor, a stripped-down modem, and membrane switches built into it. You could use this technology to make a Web terminal so cheap that you could send it as a direct mail piece. Plug it into a phone line and it would automatically dial the company that sent it out, call up catalog info, and let you place orders. Computer knowledge (and investment) required by the user would be exactly zero. Jim engagingly paints the mental picture of a poster for Victoria's Secret from which you could directly order the products it displayed, literally making the poster into a point of sale terminal that would both make a sales pitch and "close" the sale, all on the spot, for next to nothing in the way of either cash investment or floor space.

Beef up the concept a little, add a decent general-purpose microprocessor and a bit of RAM, and Voila! - an electronic PDA that costs less than one of the binder-enclosed, paper-based "Executive Organizers" you see in office supply stores.

You'd think Oracle, with all of its talk about networked "thin client" computers, or Sun, where the network is (supposed to be) the computer, would be all over Jim. He says this isn't going to happen; that these companies "...have divisions that have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in current technology. I walk in to see the heads of these companies' thin client divisions and tell them they can close the doors, that everything they're doing is obsolete, they're going to laugh. Why would they want to put themselves out of work?"

In this story published on November 11, 1999, CNET News.com reporter Brooke Crothers quoted Jim extensively, but also mentioned research done by IBM that may lead to ultra-thin computing devices similar to his. Does this mean Jim is dead in the water? That he should give up hope the way so many small software developers have given up on projects once they found Microsoft had something similar in the works?

Jim has invested years in a concept that, if handled right, could change the way computing is done and Internet connections are made, and could change the way remote data gathering is done by governments, retailers, and many others. But Jim is running low on stamina - and is out of money. The comment about his old Nissan pickup needing new brake rotors he can't afford isn't a joke; it's a sad fact. This slow descent into poverty, followed by a life of bitterness and regret, is the fate of most independent inventors. Will it be Jim's? Or will he be one of the few who manages to turn a profit (and receive at least a little acclaim) from his work?

Here, for your review, is Jim's Paper Computer Corporation Web site. Take a look at it. Then let Jim know what you think, either by e-mail or, better yet, by posting a comment here on Slashdot. Jim will be reading what you have to say and taking it to heart. If he has time, he may even jump in and respond directly to your comments.

Remember this patent? Seems the USPTO is having second thoughts about it, too. Anonymous Coward says, "According to News.com the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office re-evaluates the Y2K windowing patent."

Kevin writes "There's a story over at CNET talking about the future release of color Palms in February. Palm Computing's IPO is expected to coincide with the release. The article states that simplicity is a major part of the PalmPilot's design and that the implementation of color screens may not correspond with the ' so-called Zen of Palm principle,' keeping devices as simple as possible. "

Kevin writes "There's a story over at CNET talking about the future release of color Palms in February. Palm Computing's IPO is expected to coincide with the release. The article states that simplicity is a major part of the PalmPilot's design and that the implementation of color screens may not correspond with the ' so-called Zen of Palm principle,' keeping devices as simple as possible. "

Fungai wrote with an update to the on-going HP/Puffin Group story. There'd been some confusion with the recent purchase of Puffin Group by Linuxcare, but HP has confirmed that they will port Linux to their 64 bit PA-RISC chips. HP will still be partnering with Puffin Group to do it, with results expected in the first half of 2000.

ChrisKnight was of the many people that wrote with the story on news.com that VeriSign has purchased Thatwe Consulting. Purchase price was reportedly $575 million, although the deal must still be approved.

About fifty people have already submitted the story running on News.com concerning rumours that Red Hat would acquire Be. Sheesh - hot on the heels of the Corel story, I'm just waiting to see "Red Hat to acquire Abominable Snowman & Department of Defense in Massive Stock Swap."

Jade writes "According to this CNet article, Covalent Technology just got $5 million in venture funding. They're comparing their Apache support & services as similar to Red Hat's Linux services, and of course bring up the idea of a future IPO. I'm curious if this is really the case, or just media hype...opinions? " I think Apache is probably Linux's greatest success story, but I'm perplexed on this one.

angst writes "Looks like the Dept of Justice is itching for more to do. The newest target seems to be Viacom's MTV networks. CNet has the story here. MTV has a monopoly on music videos?" Very brief CNet writeup.

It's been an ongoing story about 3Com and its PalmPilot division. The question, of course, has been what to do with it. Just a few months ago, we covered their original plan for spinning off the division, but now it looks like they are actually putting the plan in motion and we should see an IPO in about six months.

Doug Muth asks: "Does anyone have any suggestions for a specific brand of tape drive I should purchase to use under Linux? SCSI tape drives are expensive (plus they require you to get a SCSI adapeter), so I've been looking at some IDE TR-4 tape drives. However, according Red Hat's Hardware Compatibility List, while IDE tape drives are "compatible", Red Hat does not support them." Anyone willing to pass along some helpful suggestions and/or more informaiton on the Red Hat/TR-4 issue?

Ryan Wilshere writes "C|Net has an article on so called 'Power Modems'. They claim they can do Gigabyte transfers over regular electrical line. Dallas-based start-up Media Fusion has won a U.S. patent on a process it says can send data, video and voice over electric wires at speeds thousands of times faster than current high-speed Internet access technologies." They keep on trying. We keep on hoping.

acoustix writes "CNET.com is running a story on seven different Linux distributions. Corel Linux and Red Hat 6.1 Deluxe came out on top. " I noticed a few technical flaws, but its a decent article as a whole.

acoustix writes "CNET.com is running a story on seven different Linux distributions. Corel Linux and Red Hat 6.1 Deluxe came out on top. " I noticed a few technical flaws, but its a decent article as a whole.

Jason R was the first to write with legal battle news that the RIAA ^[?] has filed a lawsuit against the company that makes the Napster. They are seeking damages of up to $100,000 per pirated song - Napster says that their software exchanges no files, and that they are not legally responsible for any pirating done.

Well VA Linux Systems has been popping up all over the news, from a story in MSNBC to a commentary from news.com. The latest word is that they have repriced their offering, putting the shares' range at $21-23 per share. As soon as the SEC approves this, the people on the friends and family list should expect to be contacted to confirm their position. Update: 12/07 05:40 by H :Thanks to readers for the latest update on pricing - it is $21-23.

CNET is reporting that Be Free, an online marketer, has obtained its second patent related to internet profiling. A company VP was quoted as saying: "This goes beyond protecting anonymous profiles" to cover business methods for any "passive creation of viewer profiles."

dougc1 writes "According to this CNET article, Netscape plans to delay release of Communicator 5.0 for two more months." Well, I'm doing okay with 4.7, but it sure would be nice to have a more stable and faster Netscape - someday. (sigh)

dafunn writes "CNet is reporting that the WTO is in agreement over extending the current Net tax ban for another 18 to 24 months. I don't know how long this will last, but it looks like temporary good news for e-commerce in general. The story is availible online. "

ecampbel writes "News.com is running a story about a company called iCraveTV.com offering live streaming network TV feeds for Canadian Internet users (an area code is required to view the streams). Most of the stations offered are Canadian, but a few Buffalo, NY stations are offered as well. This is obviously the logical conclusion of streaming media, and is scaring the pants off the local network affiliates."

Masem writes "Amazon has gotten a preliminary injunction placed on Barnes & Noble due to the fact that B&N used Amazon's patented 1-Click method for ecommerce. This does not bode well for those fighting against business model patents, and if Amazon does turn out victorious, this could deal a lot of damage to e-commerce." Now, at this point it is only a preliminary injunction, however, it does not sound the tone we'd like to hear.

Lycestra writes "CNet has an article stating Windows CE is being renamed. In the spirit of such names as Office, Money, and Explorer, it is being renamed "Windows Powered". I expected something more like 'Poke-Windows'."

Ant sent us an interesting interview with the man behind the Aibo, Dr. Toshitada Doi. He heads the Digital Creatures Lab at Sony, talks about the history of the Aibo, and where he sees the future of pets going. Speaking as a person who shares his office with an Aibo I think they're neat, but there's still a lot of work to be done before they really break into the mainstream.

News.com is reporting that AMD has released a new 750 MHz Athlon. The chip is quite pricey ($800 in lots of 1000), but should be available before the year is over. Jerry Sanders says AMD is having a strong quarter. Cnnfn.com also has an article about the release of the chip, and also mentions that a 533 MHz K6-2 was released.

Lars Bergstrom writes "Well, SGI's finally given up on their Visual Workstation product line -- check here for the details. " As many people have noted, the technology was pretty sweet, but people won't pay the huge premiums for that. At least the flat panels are great.

CNET News.com ran a story today, "Congress Passes Slew of High-Tech Bills." It's a look back at what U.S. legislators have been doing throughout 1999. The EFF summarizes this year's crop of laws as "anti-consumer, anti-public and pro-business."

C|Net recently made waves with its "Top 10 Hacks" story which seemed to say that Hack==Website Defacement. Derek Glidden found that wrong. And I'm glad he did because he's proposed that we do our own top 10 hacks. He's written a fabulous article, and challanges us to come up with a real list of hacks: The good stuff. Not the script kiddie stuff that the media likes to use to generate extreme headlines. Read this story. Its a good one.

A lot of people pointed out in Slashdot's recent coverage of an article run on C|Net called "The Top 10 Subversive Hacks of All Time" that 8 out of the 10 so-called "Hacks" listed were merely website defacements and not deserving of the "Hack" label at all. Here's your chance, as the Slashdot community, to set the record straight!

C|Net, perhaps in some kind of bizarre response to millenia fever, has lately been printing a few "Top 10 Lists" of sensational-sounding topics but rather lame content:

The Top 10 Technology Terrors - Billed as "10 products that will scare you to death" complete with a cute little Grim Fandango-esque skeleton as a mascot. Of course Back Orifice is on the list. Are you terrified yet?

Top Ten Terrors That Scare Web Builders - I'm not even sure where this article is supposed to be going. I know when I'm building a website I'm always "scared" of the Y2K problem as it relates to interfacing with my mainframe...

Ten Tricks for Digital Pranksters - Which I'd hoped might be at least slightly amusing, but turns out to be amusing in the same way that going to a K-Mart, finding the Commodore 64's on display, disabling BREAK and writing that BASIC program '10 PRINT "K-MART SUCKS "; 20 GOTO 10' was amusing when I was 12. (But then, it's not a "Top Ten" list, so I shouldn't complain.)

Given the trend, one wonders when their "Top 10 Pr0n Websites That Will Make Your Child Grow Up Into A Pervert If He or She So Much As Thinks About The URL", "Top 10 Most Violent Video Games Guaranteed To Make The Flesh Of Your Flesh And Blood Of Your Blood Turn Into A Deviant Sociopath Who Will Probably Shoot Up A McDonalds By The Time They're 25" or "Top 10 Really Annoying Top 10 Lists That We've Broken Up Into One Page Per Entry To Maximize Our Banner Ad Display" lists will show up.

Regardless of whether or not C|Net gets it in general, (I think I've made my opinion on that clear by now. :) they surely dropped the ball on their "Hacks" article. Rob and the gang at Slashdot liked my suggestion that the question be put to the Slashdot community and find out what you consider a "Great Hack."

So what is a "Hack"?

A lot of people reading that article were disappointed that C|Net decided to more or less define "Hack" as being equivalent to "website defacement", completely ignoring the traditional, more creative and useful meaning of the word. (Notice here how I deftly sidestep the whole 'hacker' vs. 'cracker' debate...) How should we determine what's a "Great Hack", much less the Top 10 of All Time, then?

Eric Raymond's Jargon File defines "Hack" in the first two meanings as:

"1. n. Originally, a quick job that produces what is needed, but not well. 2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps very time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is needed."

(Which are entirely contradictory, but hackers never let mundane things like paradoxes slow them down.) He further refines the meaning in Append ix A, "The Meaning of Hack" as:

"Hacking might be characterized as `an appropriate application of ingenuity'. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it."

If you'll notice, nothing in these definitions say anything about a "Hack" being computer-related. There have been many great Hacks that are not computer-related; it's just that people tend to associate the word "hack" with computers.

Adding to the ideas defined above, an "All-Time Great Hack" will probably also have:

• longevity - people should still be talking about it 20 or 30 years later, or even beyond.
• social and/or technological impact - it should change some aspect of life, either by directly changing every-day life or indirectly by changing how people view the world
• "eleganc e" - note however, that this does not necessarily equate simplicty. (Some people may consider the Saturn V booster a truly moby hack, as it got its job done precisely well with no doubt as to its purpose, but was anything but simple.)
• that not-easily definable quality of "I shoulda thought of that!" A Great Hack doesn't have to be "not immediately obvious" - it may just be something nobody else has done yet. For example: the WWW - there's nothing "unobvious" about defining a set of page layout macros that include text and graphics and a way to transmit and view them, but it didn't become commonplace until Tim Berners-Lee made it a big deal.

Some examples of things I would consider "Great Hacks" by these guidelines:

• Putting Apollo 11 on the moon - the NASA engineers at the time of the Apollo project are, to my mind, some of the greatest hackers in history. When you consider the state of technology at the time, what they accomplished is amazing.
• Ken Thompson's "cc hack" - No explanation necessary. A truly elegant hack that is already part of computer folklore.
• Both the "development" of AT&T UNIX into BSD UNIX and the way BSD was distributed, essentially creating the first widespread market demand for "open source software."
• Of course, no Slashdot feature article would be complete without mentioning: the development of the Linux Kernel, both for what it is and how it was/is developed.

But wait, there's more!!

In his Appendinx on "The Meaning Of Hack", ESR also says:

"An important secondary meaning of hack is `a creative practical joke'."

and MIT's Gallery of Hacks defines "hack" as:

"The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and "ethical" prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!)."

A sure point of dissent in this definition is going to be the "ethical" clause. I'll take the easy road out and leave this point to be decided by the audience - if enough people think a particular hack is a "Great Hack" regardless of ethics - then into the pot it goes.

On the other hand, the closest thing I can think of to a "Great Hack" that skirts ethical boundaries is the Robert Morris Worm. It's an event that will live in infamy in the lore of the Internet for all times for the problems it caused, but that it could accomplish what it did shows an incredible understanding of the way the systems worked and how they were interconnected at the time it happened.

It's still not entirely easy to think of "All-Time Great Hacks" that fit this definition, including the "ethical" clause:

• The canonical example is usually the MIT hack of the Harvard-Yale football game in which MIT students caused a six-foot weather baloon covered with the letters "MIT" to inflate at the 40 yard line during a pause in gameplay
• In the Slashdot article, "Uruk" pointed out that Orson Welles' broadcast of "The War Of The Worlds" in 1938 is arguably the best example of this definition of "Hack" that the world has ever known

So we have two definitions to deal with: The "Classic" Hacks, and the "MIT-Style" Hacks. It may or may not be worthwhile to separate these out into two distinct categories - I think we'll have to wait to see if there are enough unique entries in each category to require two lists.

What now?

In this feature, I would like you to list what you think are the "Greatest Hacks of All Time" and after a time to let enough people enter their suggestions and comments, I'll come back and gather up the most popular/frequent responses. Those suggestions will go up as a Slashdot poll, and the top ten from that poll will be officially listed in a subsequent feature article: "Slashdot's Top 10 Hacks of All Time" along with a bit of background on each one; rather like C|Net, except we'll put them all on one page for you.

There is only one restriction I would like to impose on suggestions: they have to be able to be documented somehow. I used to know a guy who could make his TRS-80 machines play music with software that somehow buzzed the floppy disk motor at different rates, which is a neat hack, but as I have no idea where he lives, if he still has a copy of his software, or even where to find a TRS-80 to play with anymore it's not a good candidate for this.

I've defined what it takes for a hack to be a "Great Hack", I've given some examples to help "seed the idea pool", and now it's your turn: what do you think should go on Slashdot's list of the Top 10 Hacks of All Time?

C|Net recently made waves with its "Top 10 Hacks" story which seemed to say that Hack==Website Defacement. Derek Glidden found that wrong. And I'm glad he did because he's proposed that we do our own top 10 hacks. He's written a fabulous article, and challanges us to come up with a real list of hacks: The good stuff. Not the script kiddie stuff that the media likes to use to generate extreme headlines. Read this story. Its a good one.

A lot of people pointed out in Slashdot's recent coverage of an article run on C|Net called "The Top 10 Subversive Hacks of All Time" that 8 out of the 10 so-called "Hacks" listed were merely website defacements and not deserving of the "Hack" label at all. Here's your chance, as the Slashdot community, to set the record straight!

C|Net, perhaps in some kind of bizarre response to millenia fever, has lately been printing a few "Top 10 Lists" of sensational-sounding topics but rather lame content:

The Top 10 Technology Terrors - Billed as "10 products that will scare you to death" complete with a cute little Grim Fandango-esque skeleton as a mascot. Of course Back Orifice is on the list. Are you terrified yet?

Top Ten Terrors That Scare Web Builders - I'm not even sure where this article is supposed to be going. I know when I'm building a website I'm always "scared" of the Y2K problem as it relates to interfacing with my mainframe...

Ten Tricks for Digital Pranksters - Which I'd hoped might be at least slightly amusing, but turns out to be amusing in the same way that going to a K-Mart, finding the Commodore 64's on display, disabling BREAK and writing that BASIC program '10 PRINT "K-MART SUCKS "; 20 GOTO 10' was amusing when I was 12. (But then, it's not a "Top Ten" list, so I shouldn't complain.)

Given the trend, one wonders when their "Top 10 Pr0n Websites That Will Make Your Child Grow Up Into A Pervert If He or She So Much As Thinks About The URL", "Top 10 Most Violent Video Games Guaranteed To Make The Flesh Of Your Flesh And Blood Of Your Blood Turn Into A Deviant Sociopath Who Will Probably Shoot Up A McDonalds By The Time They're 25" or "Top 10 Really Annoying Top 10 Lists That We've Broken Up Into One Page Per Entry To Maximize Our Banner Ad Display" lists will show up.

Regardless of whether or not C|Net gets it in general, (I think I've made my opinion on that clear by now. :) they surely dropped the ball on their "Hacks" article. Rob and the gang at Slashdot liked my suggestion that the question be put to the Slashdot community and find out what you consider a "Great Hack."

So what is a "Hack"?

A lot of people reading that article were disappointed that C|Net decided to more or less define "Hack" as being equivalent to "website defacement", completely ignoring the traditional, more creative and useful meaning of the word. (Notice here how I deftly sidestep the whole 'hacker' vs. 'cracker' debate...) How should we determine what's a "Great Hack", much less the Top 10 of All Time, then?

Eric Raymond's Jargon File defines "Hack" in the first two meanings as:

"1. n. Originally, a quick job that produces what is needed, but not well. 2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps very time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is needed."

(Which are entirely contradictory, but hackers never let mundane things like paradoxes slow them down.) He further refines the meaning in Append ix A, "The Meaning of Hack" as:

"Hacking might be characterized as `an appropriate application of ingenuity'. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it."

If you'll notice, nothing in these definitions say anything about a "Hack" being computer-related. There have been many great Hacks that are not computer-related; it's just that people tend to associate the word "hack" with computers.

Adding to the ideas defined above, an "All-Time Great Hack" will probably also have:

• longevity - people should still be talking about it 20 or 30 years later, or even beyond.
• social and/or technological impact - it should change some aspect of life, either by directly changing every-day life or indirectly by changing how people view the world
• "eleganc e" - note however, that this does not necessarily equate simplicty. (Some people may consider the Saturn V booster a truly moby hack, as it got its job done precisely well with no doubt as to its purpose, but was anything but simple.)
• that not-easily definable quality of "I shoulda thought of that!" A Great Hack doesn't have to be "not immediately obvious" - it may just be something nobody else has done yet. For example: the WWW - there's nothing "unobvious" about defining a set of page layout macros that include text and graphics and a way to transmit and view them, but it didn't become commonplace until Tim Berners-Lee made it a big deal.

Some examples of things I would consider "Great Hacks" by these guidelines:

• Putting Apollo 11 on the moon - the NASA engineers at the time of the Apollo project are, to my mind, some of the greatest hackers in history. When you consider the state of technology at the time, what they accomplished is amazing.
• Ken Thompson's "cc hack" - No explanation necessary. A truly elegant hack that is already part of computer folklore.
• Both the "development" of AT&T UNIX into BSD UNIX and the way BSD was distributed, essentially creating the first widespread market demand for "open source software."
• Of course, no Slashdot feature article would be complete without mentioning: the development of the Linux Kernel, both for what it is and how it was/is developed.

But wait, there's more!!

In his Appendinx on "The Meaning Of Hack", ESR also says:

"An important secondary meaning of hack is `a creative practical joke'."

and MIT's Gallery of Hacks defines "hack" as:

"The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and "ethical" prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!)."

A sure point of dissent in this definition is going to be the "ethical" clause. I'll take the easy road out and leave this point to be decided by the audience - if enough people think a particular hack is a "Great Hack" regardless of ethics - then into the pot it goes.

On the other hand, the closest thing I can think of to a "Great Hack" that skirts ethical boundaries is the Robert Morris Worm. It's an event that will live in infamy in the lore of the Internet for all times for the problems it caused, but that it could accomplish what it did shows an incredible understanding of the way the systems worked and how they were interconnected at the time it happened.

It's still not entirely easy to think of "All-Time Great Hacks" that fit this definition, including the "ethical" clause:

• The canonical example is usually the MIT hack of the Harvard-Yale football game in which MIT students caused a six-foot weather baloon covered with the letters "MIT" to inflate at the 40 yard line during a pause in gameplay
• In the Slashdot article, "Uruk" pointed out that Orson Welles' broadcast of "The War Of The Worlds" in 1938 is arguably the best example of this definition of "Hack" that the world has ever known

So we have two definitions to deal with: The "Classic" Hacks, and the "MIT-Style" Hacks. It may or may not be worthwhile to separate these out into two distinct categories - I think we'll have to wait to see if there are enough unique entries in each category to require two lists.

What now?

In this feature, I would like you to list what you think are the "Greatest Hacks of All Time" and after a time to let enough people enter their suggestions and comments, I'll come back and gather up the most popular/frequent responses. Those suggestions will go up as a Slashdot poll, and the top ten from that poll will be officially listed in a subsequent feature article: "Slashdot's Top 10 Hacks of All Time" along with a bit of background on each one; rather like C|Net, except we'll put them all on one page for you.

There is only one restriction I would like to impose on suggestions: they have to be able to be documented somehow. I used to know a guy who could make his TRS-80 machines play music with software that somehow buzzed the floppy disk motor at different rates, which is a neat hack, but as I have no idea where he lives, if he still has a copy of his software, or even where to find a TRS-80 to play with anymore it's not a good candidate for this.

I've defined what it takes for a hack to be a "Great Hack", I've given some examples to help "seed the idea pool", and now it's your turn: what do you think should go on Slashdot's list of the Top 10 Hacks of All Time?

C|Net recently made waves with its "Top 10 Hacks" story which seemed to say that Hack==Website Defacement. Derek Glidden found that wrong. And I'm glad he did because he's proposed that we do our own top 10 hacks. He's written a fabulous article, and challanges us to come up with a real list of hacks: The good stuff. Not the script kiddie stuff that the media likes to use to generate extreme headlines. Read this story. Its a good one.

A lot of people pointed out in Slashdot's recent coverage of an article run on C|Net called "The Top 10 Subversive Hacks of All Time" that 8 out of the 10 so-called "Hacks" listed were merely website defacements and not deserving of the "Hack" label at all. Here's your chance, as the Slashdot community, to set the record straight!

C|Net, perhaps in some kind of bizarre response to millenia fever, has lately been printing a few "Top 10 Lists" of sensational-sounding topics but rather lame content:

The Top 10 Technology Terrors - Billed as "10 products that will scare you to death" complete with a cute little Grim Fandango-esque skeleton as a mascot. Of course Back Orifice is on the list. Are you terrified yet?

Top Ten Terrors That Scare Web Builders - I'm not even sure where this article is supposed to be going. I know when I'm building a website I'm always "scared" of the Y2K problem as it relates to interfacing with my mainframe...

Ten Tricks for Digital Pranksters - Which I'd hoped might be at least slightly amusing, but turns out to be amusing in the same way that going to a K-Mart, finding the Commodore 64's on display, disabling BREAK and writing that BASIC program '10 PRINT "K-MART SUCKS "; 20 GOTO 10' was amusing when I was 12. (But then, it's not a "Top Ten" list, so I shouldn't complain.)

Given the trend, one wonders when their "Top 10 Pr0n Websites That Will Make Your Child Grow Up Into A Pervert If He or She So Much As Thinks About The URL", "Top 10 Most Violent Video Games Guaranteed To Make The Flesh Of Your Flesh And Blood Of Your Blood Turn Into A Deviant Sociopath Who Will Probably Shoot Up A McDonalds By The Time They're 25" or "Top 10 Really Annoying Top 10 Lists That We've Broken Up Into One Page Per Entry To Maximize Our Banner Ad Display" lists will show up.

Regardless of whether or not C|Net gets it in general, (I think I've made my opinion on that clear by now. :) they surely dropped the ball on their "Hacks" article. Rob and the gang at Slashdot liked my suggestion that the question be put to the Slashdot community and find out what you consider a "Great Hack."

So what is a "Hack"?

A lot of people reading that article were disappointed that C|Net decided to more or less define "Hack" as being equivalent to "website defacement", completely ignoring the traditional, more creative and useful meaning of the word. (Notice here how I deftly sidestep the whole 'hacker' vs. 'cracker' debate...) How should we determine what's a "Great Hack", much less the Top 10 of All Time, then?

Eric Raymond's Jargon File defines "Hack" in the first two meanings as:

"1. n. Originally, a quick job that produces what is needed, but not well. 2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps very time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is needed."

(Which are entirely contradictory, but hackers never let mundane things like paradoxes slow them down.) He further refines the meaning in Append ix A, "The Meaning of Hack" as:

"Hacking might be characterized as `an appropriate application of ingenuity'. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it."

If you'll notice, nothing in these definitions say anything about a "Hack" being computer-related. There have been many great Hacks that are not computer-related; it's just that people tend to associate the word "hack" with computers.

Adding to the ideas defined above, an "All-Time Great Hack" will probably also have:

• longevity - people should still be talking about it 20 or 30 years later, or even beyond.
• social and/or technological impact - it should change some aspect of life, either by directly changing every-day life or indirectly by changing how people view the world
• "eleganc e" - note however, that this does not necessarily equate simplicty. (Some people may consider the Saturn V booster a truly moby hack, as it got its job done precisely well with no doubt as to its purpose, but was anything but simple.)
• that not-easily definable quality of "I shoulda thought of that!" A Great Hack doesn't have to be "not immediately obvious" - it may just be something nobody else has done yet. For example: the WWW - there's nothing "unobvious" about defining a set of page layout macros that include text and graphics and a way to transmit and view them, but it didn't become commonplace until Tim Berners-Lee made it a big deal.

Some examples of things I would consider "Great Hacks" by these guidelines:

• Putting Apollo 11 on the moon - the NASA engineers at the time of the Apollo project are, to my mind, some of the greatest hackers in history. When you consider the state of technology at the time, what they accomplished is amazing.
• Ken Thompson's "cc hack" - No explanation necessary. A truly elegant hack that is already part of computer folklore.
• Both the "development" of AT&T UNIX into BSD UNIX and the way BSD was distributed, essentially creating the first widespread market demand for "open source software."
• Of course, no Slashdot feature article would be complete without mentioning: the development of the Linux Kernel, both for what it is and how it was/is developed.

But wait, there's more!!

In his Appendinx on "The Meaning Of Hack", ESR also says:

"An important secondary meaning of hack is `a creative practical joke'."

and MIT's Gallery of Hacks defines "hack" as:

"The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and "ethical" prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!)."

A sure point of dissent in this definition is going to be the "ethical" clause. I'll take the easy road out and leave this point to be decided by the audience - if enough people think a particular hack is a "Great Hack" regardless of ethics - then into the pot it goes.

On the other hand, the closest thing I can think of to a "Great Hack" that skirts ethical boundaries is the Robert Morris Worm. It's an event that will live in infamy in the lore of the Internet for all times for the problems it caused, but that it could accomplish what it did shows an incredible understanding of the way the systems worked and how they were interconnected at the time it happened.

It's still not entirely easy to think of "All-Time Great Hacks" that fit this definition, including the "ethical" clause:

• The canonical example is usually the MIT hack of the Harvard-Yale football game in which MIT students caused a six-foot weather baloon covered with the letters "MIT" to inflate at the 40 yard line during a pause in gameplay
• In the Slashdot article, "Uruk" pointed out that Orson Welles' broadcast of "The War Of The Worlds" in 1938 is arguably the best example of this definition of "Hack" that the world has ever known

So we have two definitions to deal with: The "Classic" Hacks, and the "MIT-Style" Hacks. It may or may not be worthwhile to separate these out into two distinct categories - I think we'll have to wait to see if there are enough unique entries in each category to require two lists.

What now?

In this feature, I would like you to list what you think are the "Greatest Hacks of All Time" and after a time to let enough people enter their suggestions and comments, I'll come back and gather up the most popular/frequent responses. Those suggestions will go up as a Slashdot poll, and the top ten from that poll will be officially listed in a subsequent feature article: "Slashdot's Top 10 Hacks of All Time" along with a bit of background on each one; rather like C|Net, except we'll put them all on one page for you.

There is only one restriction I would like to impose on suggestions: they have to be able to be documented somehow. I used to know a guy who could make his TRS-80 machines play music with software that somehow buzzed the floppy disk motor at different rates, which is a neat hack, but as I have no idea where he lives, if he still has a copy of his software, or even where to find a TRS-80 to play with anymore it's not a good candidate for this.

I've defined what it takes for a hack to be a "Great Hack", I've given some examples to help "seed the idea pool", and now it's your turn: what do you think should go on Slashdot's list of the Top 10 Hacks of All Time?

jconley writes "In this somewhat scary story, an online rare book dealer, Alibris, intercepted e-mail between its clients and Amazon.com. It amounts to online wiretapping." Read the story at CNET. Alibris pled guilty but says (basically) it was a misunderstanding. The penalty: a quarter-million dollar fine - are other corporations paying attention?

CitizenC writes "C|Net is currently running an article on why old school computer magazines like PC Magazine are dying rapidly.. it brought tears to my eyes reading this." Reminds me of Byte. I've never thought much of most computer magazines - they have too much stake in promoting the products of their advertisers to be believable. The floor is open for suggestions: what would make a good computer magazine to you?

Everybody and his sister seems to have submitted at least one of these links: First, Mozilla build M11 is out. Go for it! Check this Mozilla.org page for details. Second, there's a Linux port out for Napster. We already mentioned it earlier here, but apparently a lot of people missed the reference. Go get it already. And third, Corel Linux is now available - if you can handle a 311 MB. If you can't burn a CD, compile your kernel with loopback support and try 'mount -t iso9660 -o loop 6.1-i386.iso /mnt/cdrom'

Abscissa writes "I just discovered that Download.com has listed the hottest illegal utility for "bypassing" DVD copy protection. It won't be long before they get contacted by the motion picture association!" And deCSS is also mirrored on many other, lower-profile Web sites. There's simply no way it can be stopped.

After last week's TRUSTe story, I spoke with TRUSTe's Dave Steer about my concerns with the organization. A slightly clearer picture of TRUSTe's role emerged, but few of my concerns were allayed. Click for more.

First, the week's news in brief. There has been a class-action lawsuit filed against RealNetworks. Then there were two lawsuits - no, make that three lawsuits. Their stock faltered, then rallied, and is now about 40% above the day the privacy news broke.

Strangely, TRUSTe removed its press release "TRUSTe and Real Networks Announce A Pilot Software Privacy Program" from its News page on Saturday, along with one other, replacing them with an older one. There's no indication this has anything to do with the bad press of the last week.

Dave Steer had written a rebuttal to last week's story, but it is unfortunately still not available. If and when the rebuttal is published, we'll update this story with a link to it.

Now for the issues at hand. In our conversation, Dave wanted to make two key points. The first is that TRUSTe is not a "consumer advocacy group," the phrase I've been using. The second is that their press release regarding RealNetworks was a landmark decision, a culmination of six months' worth of their realizing that they have to move in a new direction.

If TRUSTe is not a consumer advocacy group, that raises the question of what it is. I didn't get a very clear answer from Dave on this. Its website says:

"The TRUSTe program was designed expressly to ensure that your privacy is protected through open disclosure and to empower you to make informed choices."

The "you" and "your" means you - the consumer. TRUSTe claims it was designed to empower and protect you.

But it's not going to do this by punishing corporations for privacy transgressions. TRUSTe is all carrot and no stick. The carrot is that, after a corporation has been caught breaking the rules, it can restore its damaged reputation by cooperating with TRUSTe: issuing a press release, taking some simple steps to improve the situation, etc.

This is a fault that's built into the way TRUSTe was set up: a design problem. There are some questions of poor implementation as well. After the March 1999 revelation of Microsoft's secret GUIDs (user-tracking technology that can lead the cops to your door), TRUSTe went to them and asked for action. Not punishment of any kind - all they asked for was an audit.

And according to Dave, "Microsoft said no."

How could Microsoft make TRUSTe back down? The poor implementation is that TRUSTe's contract with Microsoft, and with RealNetworks, and presumably with all its 750+ licensees, makes a distinction between privacy violations that take place over the web, and others. Companies that steal consumers' privacy through non-web-related technology are not covered under paragraph 5A of the TRUSTe License Agreement.

Paragraph 5C, however, allows TRUSTe to break the agreement and void the trustmark, for any reason. If it had wanted to pressure Microsoft, this would have been the threat to make: terminating the contract, and going public with a condemnation.

But that wasn't TRUSTe's goal. Although it claims:

"...licensees agree to cooperate with all TRUSTe reviews and inquiries. If we cannot reach a satisfactory resolution ... [this] could result in a Web site compliance review by a CPA firm, revocation of the trustmark, termination from the TRUSTe program, breach of contract proceedings, or referral to the appropriate federal authority."

...it will never take these steps. Microsoft refused to cooperate because the carrot wasn't big enough - so TRUSTe offered them a bigger carrot. RealNetworks scanned its users' hard drives for private personal data, uploaded it to their servers, and blatantly lied about it. Short of actually stealing our credit card numbers and running up a tab at the Sharper Image, it is hard to imagine a more serious violation of privacy. Yet TRUSTe went to them hat in hand, asking to be allowed to collaborate.

Those contracts that give TRUSTe no authority over non-web privacy violations? That's not a bug - that's a feature. Even when it has the right to take serious action, a right TRUSTe grants itself in paragraph 5C, it chooses not to use it. Design problem.

Corporate invasion of personal privacy is not a win-win situation. This is a war in which TRUSTe will often have to take sides. Learning that it backed down from Microsoft and had to haggle over even the audit it wanted to impose was an eye-opener. Chris Larsen, the CEO of E-Loan who revealed the behind-the-scenes haggling, described his company as "very concerned" about TRUSTe's inability to address the issue.

In fact, I never would have heard about that if not for the Slashdot comment where Seth Finkelstein called attention to it. It's not confidence-inspiring that TRUSTe has refused to allow any negative information on its homepage, in its press releases, or in its statements of findings. The constant comforting message leaves me uncomfortable.

Dave's second point was that this collaboration - on a new program which will cover non-web as well as web violations of privacy - heralds an important new direction in TRUSTe's history. Now that they have enough licensees to pay the bills, they are not beholden to any of their sponsors, and can start to take a harder line. And they can renegotiate their contracts to fix the web/non-web distinction.

I'd like to believe that's true. But the heads of TRUSTe surely know that, if they ever started condemning corporations' privacy violations instead of collaborating with them, renewals on their contracts would dry up. Corporations love to enter agreements with organizations which give them good press. Organizations that give bad press get ignored at best.

TRUSTe's reputation for lax enforcement is surely part of the reason they now have 750 licensees. It would be a very different story if the carrot ever got replaced by the stick.

I could be wrong. But TRUSTe's actions support this view even if its words don't. RealNetworks needed to be slapped, hard - but now it's up to the lawsuits to give the company a reality check.

Sure, TRUSTe may have helped RealNetworks figure out the proper reaction in this case. But it has 750 other licensees that all got the message loud and clear: whatever you do, TRUSTe will not chastise you. There is no incentive to do the right thing. By its actions, TRUSTe encourages corporations to violate privacy when they think they can get away with it. This will happen again - and it will be the same story each time.

And it may happen sooner rather than later. The most frightening thing I've heard all week was Dave Steer's offhand comment that programs like RealJukebox are probably more common than we think. That makes it all the more ironic that TRUSTe is unwilling to put consumers' interests first.

Slashdot's received a lot of submissions about RIAA actions recently, and the actions of colleges taken after the RIAA sent them nasty letters. One of the interesting things about this is that the RIAA is apparently not listing any specific offenders, just sending general warnings to any and all colleges with computer networks. Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, copyright holders acquired several new rights, with the promise they wouldn't abuse them. They're abusing them. (More...)

A good example is a demand letter to a Swiss university, ETH Zurich, which demands that the school immediately terminate all web pages with illegal MP3 files (illegal is of course a judicial decision; the letter presumes that all MP3s are illegal); that the school provide names and home addresses of all students with MP3 files hosted on the school's servers; that the school provide the date that those MP3 files were first hosted (for every MP3 on every server); and that the school provide the IP address for every machine anywhere on the internet which downloaded a MP3 file from the school's servers.

The letter closes with a carrot: we'll adjust our monetary demands based on how well you comply with this letter. Better hope your IP address doesn't appear too many times in those web server logs.

We can probably assume that the demands to U.S. schools are much the same - far-reaching, extortionate letters which are not specific about any particular infringement alleged to be occurring, but which are intended nonetheless to scare the universities into cracking down on their students. The terms of the compromise of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act were that the RIAA and related groups would do the policing of their copyrights - if they found a specific file that they alleged was unlawfully infringing, they have a procedure to follow, specific information to provide about the specific infringing file, and the ISP (college or whatever) is supposed to "do their part" by deleting/removing said file if the paperwork is correct. ISPs and colleges are not supposed to do the grunt work themselves - that results in the kind of overbroad crackdowns that we've seen. This was the subject of specific negotiations during the process of creating this law.

But the RIAA, of course, would prefer that schools and ISPs do their cracking down for them. So they send these general scare letters, hoping to trigger a reaction.

Scare tactics work. Universities scan through student computers, trying passwords on protected directories. The new Rio players will incorporate all of the RIAA's desired protections against copying of MP3 files - the price of settling the RIAA's lawsuit. The next target is Napster.

RIAA will now be filing suit against Napster, an application which effectively functions like a single purpose IRC server, connecting people who want to share MP3 files, whether legally or not. (There's a linux port of Napster; better download it quick.) Some schools, like Oregon State University, are so scared they're blocking all access to Napster servers from school systems. In the ideal world, Napster should probably win - the RIAA could monitor their servers and demand that infringing users be eliminated, but the service equally provides people with an avenue to share legal MP3 files, and this significant non-infringing use is all that is needed under copyright law. The article I just linked to and a nice Wired story both show Napster feebly trying to insist on their duties under the DMCA, saying that the RIAA needs to tell them in writing about specific instances of infringement - but the RIAA doesn't care about the law.

Napster, of course, has no money to fight a lawsuit. This is exactly what happened to the Rio: they won in court, but since the RIAA planned to appeal the suit and drain more money out of Diamond Multimedia, they settled by promising that future Rio's would include the RIAA's copyright protections. Like the Dentist's extortion tactics in Cryptonomicon[1], RIAA lawsuits are equally powerful whether they are on solid legal grounds or not - Napster will lose this suit, whether they win or lose, because the RIAA can afford the money to fight it and Napster cannot. So presumably Napster and RIAA will come to some agreement, settle the lawsuit, and Napster's next generation will incorporate the RIAA's demanded copyright protection system.

Just remember, RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen says she loves the idea of Napster to build communities, "but not on the backs of huge mega-corporations with billions of dollars of revenue quarterly."[2]

The RIAA is hardly the only abuser. The Business Software Alliance, essentially a front group for protecting Microsoft's copyrights, does similar things with regard to "pirated" software. (What a PR genius it was who thought of describing all copying of software as piracy! Probably the same person behind the "cyber-squatter" label for anyone who owns a domain that a company covets.) The BSA is now raiding homes of people accused of copying software.

The idea behind copyright is to expand the amount of information available to the public by creating a government-mandated monopoly on reproducing it - for a limited time (28 years maximum, at the beginning - today the maximum copyright term could be over 150 years). Copyright has always has the inherent give-back to society - the work would pass out of protection, and then anyone could copy it and use it as they saw fit. But copyright is now essentially unlimited - over the last twenty years, the length of the copyright period has increased by forty years, so that essentially no materials produced since World War I have entered the public domain. In about 15-18 years, copyright holders will again be petitioning Congress to extend the copyright term, so that entities like Mickey Mouse never enter the public domain. The extension is now being challenged as unconstitutional, but the challengers lost in District Court and it's far from certain that this suit can succeed.

In today's world, it's customary to speak of copyright as some sort of innate right. It isn't. It's there for the betterment of society, but its functioning, today, contributes nothing to society - all it is is a government-sanctioned monopoly transferring money from your pocket to others, with nothing ever given back - and no possibility of give-backs until 2019, under current law.

We need to rethink copyright. It's not a fundamental right of corporations to receive a 95-year government monopoly. Businesses plan on a five-year cycle - if something isn't forecast to make a return on investment in five years, it doesn't get done. A five-year grant of copyright to corporate authors would serve just as well in promoting the development of new material, and would bring a tremendous amount of material into the public domain, which is copyright's true intent. With a much smaller amount of material actually under copyright, enforcement of it would be far simpler and more straightforward.

But naturally this would cost certain companies a lot of money - they're used to wallowing in their government-granted monopoly. Disney has made back their costs for creating Mickey Mouse billions of times over, but they're used to the cash flow now and would be willing to buy an entire Congress to protect it. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act was passed with the aid of a great deal of subterfuge, but most importantly, a great deal of campaign contributions. Now you can be a criminal not just for actually copying anything, but for making a "device" (hardware or software) which facilitates copying - we're talking five years in Federal prison. Imagine doing five years in Federal prison so that Congress can protect their campaign donations, errr, I mean, Disney's cash flow.

We're extremely close to the day when debuggers are illegal. Through threats, strategic campaign donations, and outright extortion practiced on upstart companies, copyright-holders like the RIAA are building copyright protection into the very infrastructure of computing.

Making changes in this system requires a fundamental commitment from the U.S. populace that it be changed. The commitment doesn't exist yet, but as more and more people experience the power of copyright to affect what they can and cannot publish online, and the abuses of the companies dedicated to protecting copyright beyond the terms of the increasingly-protective law, perhaps it will in the future.

Some slashdot readers will no doubt say, "Open source, you idiot!" Open source is a reaction to these problems, not a solution to them. Despite the open source phenomenon, the trend is toward more and more works being locked up, and locked up permanently, behind laws and cryptographic protocols. It shouldn't have to be a war between words, pictures and code that is always free to use and words, pictures and code that is locked up for all eternity - we should demand that the social contract envisioned in the Constitution be fulfilled by forcing copyright holders to give back to society, whether they want to or not.

-- Michael Sims

[1] Gratuitous Cryptonomicon reference provided free of charge.

[2] Quote may not reflect Rosen's exact words, but does reflect her intent.

Amigan writes " C|Net news.com is reporting on VP Al Gore's visit to Microsoft's campus today includes a statement from the Vice President that "...he expected that the White House would get involved in any settlement talks between the company and the Justice Department when antitrust remedies get discussed. Why would the White House need to be involved?"

xjamie writes "Red Hat has more changes under their hat. CNet is running a story saying Matthew Szulik will replace Bob Young as Red Hat's CEO." So we went and bothered Bob at the LinuxToday booth. The deal is that he is going to be the Chairman, and focus more on the Open Source aspects of the business, and Matthew is gonna be more concerned with the next quarter's bottom line.

xjamie writes "Red Hat has more changes under their hat. CNet is running a story saying Matthew Szulik will replace Bob Young as Red Hat's CEO." So we went and bothered Bob at the LinuxToday booth. The deal is that he is going to be the Chairman, and focus more on the Open Source aspects of the business, and Matthew is gonna be more concerned with the next quarter's bottom line.

vivekb writes " C|Net reports that Microsoft and Hoshin GigaMedia Centre, Taiwan's cable ISP, will be jointly providing broadband services. The two companies will create a broadband version of MSN, financed by a rumored $31.5 million dollar investment by Microsoft to GigaMedia. The network runs on Microsoft's Commercial Internet Services platform. GigaMedia is part of Taiwan's giant conglomerate, the Koos Group, and [originally] partnered with 3Com to introduce their cable modem service."